Extraordinary people of 2007: Most courageous – Trevor Smith

The Idaho Statesman editorial board selected five people from the Treasure Valley who showed extraordinary leadership or positive influence over the past year on issues we care about.

Photos courtesy of Green is the

Diagnosed with a brain tumor five years ago. After surgery, chemo and radiation, 18-year-old Trevor Smith has thrown his energy into childhood cancer awareness.

 - Idaho Statesman

Edition Date: 12/27/07

While typical teens spend their free time snowboarding and playing video games, Trevor Smith attends townhall meetings to fight a cyanide-leaching gold mine or to support federal compensation for Idahoans injured by Cold War bomb tests.

For most teens, their biggest public speaking audience is a classroom or church congregation. Trevor has spoken in front of 30,000 people in Bronco Stadium and he’s lobbying for time in front of the U.S. Congress.

Trevor once wanted to be a golf professional. Today, he would prefer a career that helps people.

At age 18, Trevor feels lucky to have survived a brutal battle with cancer and is committed to making the world better for other children inflicted with similar diseases.

Because of his spirit for creating positive change and his grown-up attitude, we selected Trevor the Valley’s most courageous person in 2007.

“He survived because he was meant to do what he’s doing,” said his mother, Charlie Smith.

Trevor was 13 and living a country club, wealthy life in McCall when everything changed for him and his mom. He was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The two moved to Boise and began a long journey toward recovery. A highly malignant tumor was removed after an eight-hour brain surgery. He then endured a year’s worth of chemotherapy and its debilitating effects. Charlie spent every waking hour caring for her son.

Trevor has spent the last five years in remission and can say he’s cancer-free. Though the disease has left his body, he said it will never leave his mind. He will always fight to help other children with cancer.

“I can’t stress enough how important public awareness is when battling cancer,” Trevor said. “We must find a cure. We must be more accepting of those with cancer. We must recognize symptoms in children so they can get help and survive.”

Trevor has devoted much of the last year to being a volunteer and public speaker, and he has launched several new projects, all efforts to fight cancer:

Trevor’s most proud of hosting the first “Trevor’s Trek”, a one-mile walk that was held in October to bring awareness to childhood cancer. There were 212 participants in the inaugural event, including several young children in wheelchairs. After the walk, Trevor and several other local leaders spoke to the crowd. He then attended a Boise State University football game that evening and made a presentation to 30,000 people in the stadium.

Hawaii, Philadelphia and San Diego have expressed interest in hosting a Trevor’s Trek, an event the Smiths envision becoming as famous as the Susan B. Komen runs for breast cancer awareness.

“We are very encouraged that this will evolve,” Charlie said. “People there understood what the purpose was. Since the event, we’ve had parents of children with cancer want to be involved next year.”

Earlier this month, Trevor helped launch an Idaho chapter of “Kids for Wish Kids”, a fundraising program to benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation. He spoke to about 60 high school student leaders, telling them his story of survival and how important it is to fight cancer. These teens were asked to start fundraisers at their clubs and schools to raise money to grant wishes.

“I’ve helped him, but he’s the man in the driver’s seat,” said Boise Schools Superintendent Stan Olson. “He’s a great kid. This is not a self-enhancing situation. He’s sincere and has a true focus for helping out people.”

Trevor has spoken in favor of starting a Boise summer camp for kids with cancer, emulating the highly successful “Rainbow Gold” camp in Sun Valley. Trevor attended the camp when he was sick.

“I didn’t want to go but once I was there is was amazing,” Trevor said. “Every kid with cancer should have the opportunity to go.”

Trevor and Charlie paid for and then helped build a Holiday Parade float symbolizing Trevor’s Trek. Trevor and six kids with cancer rode on the float.

Trevor has met with Olson to ask that environmental science be a high school requirement instead of an elective, so teens can learn more about cancer-causing elements.

“He is creating a greater level of sensitivity,” Olson said. “He’s a natural speaker but a shy young man.”

Trevor has kept up-to-date on topics such as the concerns of nuclear testing – he regularly attends meetings of downwinders, Idahoans affected by nuclear radiation from Cold War bomb tests. He’s also a regular at Boise townhall meetings about the construction of a gold mine near Atlanta, where residents fear the mine will leak arsenic, cyanide and other toxins into the river, which is used for drinking water, irrigation and recreation.

“I’m worried about my future, the future of the kid next to me and the next generation,” Trevor said. “I’m not going to give up.”

He has written to Idaho and California lawmakers asking for more cancer research funding. Charlie is optimistic that Trevor will be asked to speak to Congress in 2008.

He was selected to a statewide childhood cancer panel that will address issues related to the disease.

He is member of a newly formed organization (National Disease Clusters Alliance) that investigates cancer clusters and what might cause them. Charlie believes that Trevor’s brain cancer was part of a cluster in McCall.

He has helped write a book about his life and, if it is published, some of the proceeds will go to childhood cancer research.

“We’re not looking for compensation,” Charlie said. “We want to put an end to our kids and adults being sick.”

Trevor will graduate from Boise High this spring. He wants to go to college to study the environment but he also wants to keep doing his community service work.

“I’ll do something that helps people,” he said.

Did chemical exposure cause cancers for McCullom Lake residents?
Experts disagree on findings in studies

By KEVIN P. CRAVER – kcraver@nwherald.com

About this series: The Northwest Herald today begins a six-part series on the McCullom Lake brain cancer lawsuits.

This special report is the result of a six-month investigation by the newspaper.  Senior reporter Kevin Craver acquired and reviewed thousands of pages of documentation spanning more than three decades.

Craver and videographer Danielle Guerra interviewed more than 60 people, including most of the 22 plaintiffs, or their next of kin, who have filed suit to date. Craver and Guerra traveled to Phoenix and Philadelphia to conduct some of the interviews.

The chemicals listed in the McCullom Lake brain cancer lawsuits sound more like tongue twisters or the stuff of science fiction than health hazards.

However, the existence of vinyl chloride, vinylidene chloride, and trichloroethylene in groundwater flowing from two Ringwood manufacturers is not fiction, but fact. Vinylidene chloride, also known as 1,1-DCE, has been traced to the closed landfill at Rohm and Haas, and trichloroethylene, or TCE, has been traced to Modine Manufacturing Co.’s closed disposal pit.

It also is scientific fact that both chemicals, which do not occur naturally, break down into vinyl chloride, which studies since the 1960s have tied to certain cancers.

Vinyl chloride is not something you would want to ingest. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer list vinyl chloride as a known human carcinogen. The EPA sets the minimum safe level in drinking water at zero – in short, no amount is safe.

But does vinyl chloride cause brain cancer? The answers fall along predictable lines in the lawsuits.

To the defendants’ attorneys and the experts they have retained, such as Duke University neuropathologist Dr. Darrell Bigner, vinyl chloride can be linked to other cancers, such as extremely rare liver angiosarcoma, but its link to brain cancer is inconclusive.

“It is my opinion that the [chemicals in the lawsuits] would not cause brain or pituitary [tumors] in humans even after lifelong exposure to maximum tolerated doses,” Bigner wrote in his report in support of the defendant companies.

The absence in the village of cases of liver angiosarcoma, of which only a handful are reported in the U.S. each year, is proof that vinyl chloride never reached McCullom Lake residents, defense toxicologist Dr. James Whysner said.

“If [vinyl chloride] were causing cancer in McCullom Lake Village, it would be a cluster of liver cancers not brain cancers … the evidence has been deemed sufficient by Federal agencies that VC causes liver cancer, whereas the evidence for brain cancer has been characterized as weak and inadequate,” Whysner wrote.

Experts retained by plaintiff attorney Aaron Freiwald have cited years of studies of vinyl chloride workers in North America and Europe as proof that vinyl chloride causes brain cancer. Furthermore, Freiwald does not hesitate to cast doubt on studies that contradict. In one 1991 study cited by defendant experts, the epidemiologist publicly recanted his conclusions that vinyl chloride can cause brain cancer after the study’s funder – the Chemical Manufacturers Association – objected.

To date, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry lists brain cancer as a possible effect of vinyl chloride exposure.



Dr. Gary Ginsberg, a toxicologist retained by Freiwald, has concluded that residents were exposed to vinyl chloride over decades. But much of that exposure was not drinking it, but inhaling it – because vinyl chloride rapidly evaporates, Ginsberg said victims breathed it in as they drank, showered and bathed.

“[Vinyl chloride] air concentrations inside McCullom Lake Village homes for a 25-year period are estimated to be, on average, well above regulatory thresholds of concern … in other words, the air concentrations estimated for McCullom Lake Village homes are far above the levels regulatory bodies would consider safe and would likely be mitigated,” Ginsberg wrote in a July 2007 report.

But other experts said the jury still was out on whether vinyl chloride definitively causes brain cancer. Dr. James Ruffer, radiation oncologist at Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington, said modern medicine still did not know much about why people got brain cancer. Ruffer is not involved in the litigation.

“Besides ionizing radiation and some very rare genetic causes, the jury is out as to what causes brain tumors in people,” Ruffer said.

But to Dr. James Dahlgren, a nationally known environmental toxicologist not involved in the litigation, the jury is in, and vinyl chloride is guilty as charged.

Dahlgren was invited by Centegra Health System to address vinyl chloride’s toxicity, specifically because of the McCullom Lake cases, at an Oct. 24 symposium on neurology.

“To say that the jury is out on brain cancer and vinyl chloride is wrong,” Dahlgren said. “And I can say that because there are lots and lots and lots of studies.”

Although Dahlgren steered clear of assigning any culpability to either Rohm and Haas or Modine, he said that vinyl chloride from the breakdown of volatile organic compounds would be a prime suspect in the illnesses.

“If there was exposure, it certainly is one of the most likely candidates,” Dahlgren said.

enlarge

ANNETTE LEIN file photo

Water runs down from an underground spring on a hill forming a pond near Modock Road in Victor. By some accounts, New York is at the cutting edge on a hot-button environmental concern. Others say it was tardy and has years of work to do.

Vapor intrusion may be crucial test for DEC

Steve Orr
Staff writer

(December 16, 2007) — By some accounts, New York is at the cutting edge on a hot-button environmental concern. Others say the state was tardy and has years of work to do.

At issue is vapor intrusion, a phenomenon in which chemical vapors can rise from underground contamination and accumulate in buildings, putting occupants at risk.

Under the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s program, hundreds of sites around the state are under study for evidence of vapor intrusion.

To date, more than 1,200 homes or other buildings in New York have needed measures to alleviate toxic vapor intrusion. Nearly half are in Endicott, Broome County, where the vapor intrusion issue rose to prominence in 2003.

Six are in Victor, where the DEC continues to explore groundwater contamination found in 1990.

But the program, begun soon after the extent of problems in Endicott became known, remains a work in progress. Studies have been completed at only about 20 percent of the old waste disposal sites that New York set out to examine.

Hundreds more sites, including dozens in the Rochester area, await a DEC assessment to determine whether building occupants have anything to fear from below-ground vapors.

Those efforts should have begun sooner, some say.

“It’s really just a huge mistake on the agency’s part,” said Anne Rabe, a longtime environmental activist who is a campaign coordinator for the Center for Health, Environment & Justice.

“Under Governor (George) Pataki, there was a political determination to cut back on looking at off-site contamination. It was a more industry-friendly program. They cut corners, and they created these Endicott sites — by not investigating vapor intrusion.”

Denise Sheehan, the DEC commissioner in the last two years of the Pataki administration, said experts in New York and elsewhere did not recognize the threat posed by toxic vapors until a few years ago. “You have to respond to the science. Over the years, the science has changed,” she said.

Current DEC commissioner Pete Grannis, appointed in April by first-year Gov. Eliot Spitzer, said he is not sure the agency was late getting to the issue.

“Should they have been more aggressive sooner? Possibly,” said Grannis, who dealt with environmental issues as a member of the state Assembly. “I’m a big believer in us being ahead of the curve, (but) I don’t think anybody truly understood the breadth of and the concerns about vapor intrusion.”

Today, he said, the DEC has “the most far-reaching and aggressive vapor intrusion investigative program in the country.”

Lenny Siegel, an environmental activist in California who advises groups about vapor intrusion, praised New York’s program as “leading edge” at a recent public forum in Albany.

Issue developed slowly

For years, experts in New York and elsewhere had known that vapors from chemicals in the soil or groundwater could infiltrate buildings. Public health concerns at Love Canal in Niagara County in the late 1970s were based partly on fear of toxic vapors, and neighborhoods around Kodak Park in Rochester had extensive vapor-intrusion testing in the late 1980s.

During the 1990s, however, vapor intrusion remained a low-profile concern at New York toxic spill and dump sites.

That ended around 1999, when officials at the DEC and the state Department of Health took note of new findings in other states. This research held that vapors, especially from the industrial solvent trichloroethene, or TCE, were much more likely to rise through soil than had been thought. Research also showed that the method used to evaluate sites for vapor intrusion potential was inaccurate.

TCE, once widely used for metal degreasing and other purposes, may cause cancer and other health problems in people exposed to high-enough doses.

The vapor intrusion issue hit the headlines in New York in February 2003, when officials announced that testing had found TCE vapors seeping into the basements of homes and commercial buildings in Endicott from spills at a former IBM Corp. facility.

Later in 2003, the DEC and Health Department launched their major program to look for vapor intrusion at waste disposal sites, including 421 older sites where cleanup decisions had already been made.

DEC officials began poring through records of older waste sites, some of them uncovered two decades ago, to assess the possibility of vapor intrusion. Field testing often followed.

Evaluations have been completed at 89, or 21 percent, of the 421 older sites, according to a summary provided by the DEC Thursday. Work is under way at 66 percent of the sites and hasn’t started at 13 percent.

Findings at more than 20 of the sites led to installation of ventilation systems to collect vapors from below basement slabs before they can enter the buildings.

Decisions about ventilation systems are based largely on field testing, which New York relies on more than some states. Vapor tests are done beneath the building foundation, in the basement and on the first floor.

In total, work to address vapor intrusion has been done at 1,240 structures in New York, according to a recent Health Department summary. Sub-basement ventilation systems have been installed at 972 homes or other residential buildings and at 32 commercial structures.

A first round of vapor testing was completed this fall at a Gates neighborhood where groundwater is contaminated with trichloroethene. The TCE came from a leaking storage tank discovered at a factory two decades ago.

Six homes in the neighborhood required ventilation systems, the DEC concluded, and more testing is planned.

“I’m not unduly worried,” said Bill Winchell, who had nothing but praise for the state workers who plan to install a ventilation system under his basement.

“Having been here for 12 years, I never detected anything unusual, so it all came as a surprise that there’s possibly a problem. That’s what they’re doing — they’re saying there’s a remote possibility there’s a problem, so let’s fix it.”

SORR@DemocratandChronicle.com

State doubts radar linked to cancer

By Stephanie Vosk

STAFF WRITER

December 15, 2007 6:00 AM

It is unlikely that radar from PAVE PAWS is the primary cause of 14 local cases of Ewing’s sarcoma diagnosed since 1982, according to a study released yesterday by the state Department of Public Health.

The study was conducted in response to concerns from Cape residents that the phased array radar from the PAVE PAWS early warning system on the Massachusetts Military Reservation caused the rare bone cancer that usually hits children.

The study primarily focused on eight individuals — seven children and one adult — diagnosed between 1995 and 2004. The expected number of cases on Cape Cod during that period would have been two.

Suzanne Condon, assistant public health commissioner, visited with the families of those seven children yesterday to give them the results before releasing them to the public.

“I think that people are always happier when you can tell them, ‘I think this is absolutely what caused your child’s illness.’ We were not able to do that today. But I think for some there may have been relief that we’ve perhaps ruled out one environmental factor, which is PAVE PAWS.”

The $40,000 study took a particularly close look at five children diagnosed in 2003 and 2004.

Three children, two in Dennis and one in Brewster, live within a few miles of each other. Two of the cases were diagnosed on the same day in 2004.

Two of those children had lived on the Cape for only a year or less at the time of diagnosis, and the other had lived here for about two years. A standard time frame for looking at environmental exposure of cancer in children is a minimum of two years, Condon said. “It doesn’t look like PAVE PAWS is the smoking gun,” she said.

But Bernie Young, whose 22-year-old daughter Holly is undergoing treatment for the disease, said just because there’s no evidence of high exposure levels now, it doesn’t mean there weren’t high levels at the time of the diagnoses. “People need to keep in mind the failure to prove a hypothesis is not proof of the converse,” Young said yesterday, on the third anniversary of his daughter’s diagnosis. “It doesn’t mean that PAVE PAWS is not the problem.”

Young still questions measurements taken by Cambridge-based Broadcast Signal Lab in 2004 that led him to press the state for this more recent study.

He will continue to press state public health officials to continue studying what could be behind the cancer diagnoses, and he plans to research PAVE PAWS and Ewing’s in general on his own.

A more in-depth state study on childhood cancer rates in Sandwich, Barnstable and Mashpee is still ongoing. That study is looking at why there was an elevated number of various kinds of childhood cancer between 1995 and 2002. It involves interviews with parents of the children, an examination of their medical records, and a review of all of the other health studies that focused on the Upper Cape over the last couple of decades.

“We’re hopeful that if we see something in the three-town study, that it might shed some light on the other individuals further down the Cape that were diagnosed,” Condon said.

Health department officials also have agreed to meet with the families to discuss the data in depth once they’ve had a chance to review it, and they will look out for new cases of Ewing’s on Cape Cod.

Only one child on the Cape has been diagnosed with the disease since 2005, Condon said.

Ken Leandre, whose 7-year-old son Jordan is recovering from Ewing’s, said he hopes the numbers this time are more consistent than in the 2004 study conducted by Broadcast Signal Lab for the Air Force, which operates PAVE PAWS.

But, he said, there’s not enough information about Ewing’s out there, and all research is good research.

“I’m lucky in every case that Jordan went through treatment and he’s alive, that he survived, but there are a lot of kids who aren’t. It’s upsetting. It breaks your heart.”

Stephanie Vosk can be reached at svosk@capecodonline.com.

Key findings of PAVE PAWS study

Incidence of Ewing’s sarcoma on Cape Cod for the 10-year period 1995-2004 was elevated in children up to 19 years of age. Seven diagnoses were reported in children when approximately two would be expected.

With one exception, no geographic or spatial clustering was noted when the place of residence at diagnosis was mapped for children who had a Ewing’s-related tumor. Although two individuals lived in close proximity to one another at the time of their diagnosis, their diagnoses were approximately five years apart.

It appears unlikely that PAVE PAWS played a primary role in the incidence of Ewing’s on Cape Cod.

Source: Department of Public Health

State agencies study Zavalla health, environmental concerns

By CHRISTINE S. DIAMOND
The Lufkin Daily News

http://www.lufkindailynews.com/hp/content/news/stories/2007/12/15/zavalla.html

Lingering toxins continue to cause cancer: study

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Banned pesticides and other toxic chemicals lingering in the environment put people at an increased risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma, according to a B.C. Cancer Agency study.

The study – the largest of its kind ever done on the link between the illness and contaminants such as polychlorinated biphenyls and agricultural products such as herbicides, insecticides and fungicides – will be published in the International Journal of Cancer this week.

Researchers found people with the highest levels of a certain type of insecticide in their blood had 2.7 times the risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma as those with the lowest amounts.

That strong link involved a metabolite of the insecticide chlordane.

People with PCBs in their blood, meanwhile, had twice the risk of developing the disease as those with the lowest exposures. That’s about the same level of increased risk as having a family history of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is the fifth most common cancer in Canada and the most common type of lymphoma. In 2007, nearly 1,000 B.C. residents will be diagnosed with the disease and nearly 400 will die from it.

John Spinelli, a senior scientist at the cancer agency and lead author of the study, said the findings prove more research on synthetic compounds should be done to determine whether they are unsafe for humans.

The compounds in the study were banned because they were shown to cause cancer in animal studies.

“Now we have sufficient evidence in humans,” Spinelli said.

He noted that when researchers first proposed the study several years ago, they wanted to explore why non-Hodgkin lymphoma had been steadily increasing around the world for 30 years.

After the study began, the rates began levelling off, raising scientists’ curiosity because “it clearly wasn’t genetics that would change that since genetics don’t change that fast.”

It is thought the disease rates have flattened out in the past three or four years because of improvements to the environment – the result of banning the chemicals years earlier.

Even though the synthetically produced chemical compounds  in the study have been banned in Canada for decades, they still exist in some types of flame retardants and equipment (PCB insulating fluid in older electrical goods).

They also pose a threat because some – such as DDT to kill mosquitoes and prevent malaria – are still used in other countries. The compounds are found throughout the world, circulating in the atmosphere, oceans, soil and animal feed.

“These kinds of contaminants and pollutants have a very long half life which means they may take decades or more to degrade. They were banned 20 to 30 years ago but maybe we should have acted earlier,” said Spinelli.

“We can’t really avoid these contaminants,” he said in an interview. “In fact they are still going to be in organic foods because although farmers aren’t spraying these chemicals on crops any more, [residue] is still in the air and in the soil. There’s not much we can do to keep from being exposed to them,” he said, adding that environmental toxins are believed to be the cause of about 10 per cent of cancers.

Many of the chemicals that have replaced the banned substances are largely water soluble and degrade much more quickly so they don’t pose as much of a problem to the environment and human health, while “PCBs accumulate and get stored in the fatty tissue of fish and animals or animal products like butter which we eat so they never really vanish,” Spinelli said.

“But we do expect that the risk of this type of cancer from these kinds of contaminants will go down over time,” he added.

The study involved taking blood samples from 422 newly diagnosed non-Hodgkin lymphoma patients (before their treatment began) and 460 healthy control subjects between March 2000 and February 2004. Samples were sent to a toxicology laboratory in Quebec for analysis of compounds called organochlorines, pesticides and pesticide byproducts.

“Our results support the hypothesis that certain PCB [types] and … pesticides increase the risk of [non-Hodgkin lymphoma],” the study states.

Other known risk factors for developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma are immune suppression treatment after organ transplants, HIV/AIDS, previous chemotherapy treatment and certain viruses such as Epstein-Barr or hepatitis C.

Spinelli said research he and his colleagues are doing looks at whether similar chemical compounds and environmental contaminants are also a risk factor for cancers such as breast and ovarian.

The $800,000 study by Spinelli and his nine co-researchers  was funded by the Canadian Cancer Society (through the National Cancer Institute of Canada) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Called Organochlorines and Risk of non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, it will be published Dec. 15.

Sun Health Issues Reporter

pfayerman@png.canwest.com

Air study results are inconclusive

By SCOTT STREATER

Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Mon, Dec. 10, 2007

A long-awaited study of air pollution in Midlothian found levels of potentially dangerous benzene, arsenic, lead and other toxic chemicals at levels that exceed the most conservative health screening limits and “could be interpreted as posing a public health hazard.”

But state and federal health officials nonetheless concluded that more study is needed before saying “the extent of the public health hazard posed by air contaminants in Midlothian,” according to the report, obtained by the Star-Telegram.

The health consultation, which is set to be released Tuesday, found huge gaps in air monitoring and health-screening data and recommended that the state collect more air samples and research toxicology literature to further assess potential health risks. The draft report will be open for public comment beginning Tuesday, before final recommendations are made.

“We found that the majority of the risks associated with exposure to the chemicals analyzed in this health consultation were low,” according to the 128-page report. “However, we are classifying this site as an Indeterminate Public Health Hazard because further information is needed.”

The study was at the request of Midlothian residents, some of whom were disappointed by the vague findings.

The report does not name the individual sources responsible for pollution, nor does it guarantee recommendations will be followed. Its vague conclusions are likely to fan debate over whether state regulators need to crack down on industrial polluters in Ellis County, southeast of Fort Worth.

“I don’t know that we’ll ever have all of the answers,” said Midlothian Mayor Boyce Whatley, who had not seen the study late Sunday. “I would hope that the studies, if they are ever conclusive, show there are no long-term health effects because of the industrial emissions out here. But as a mayor and as a resident, certainly I want as much information as possible, and if there are additional studies that have to be done, I would favor those.”

So does Sal Mier and his wife, Grace, who spearheaded a petition signed by 371 residents that prompted federal health officials in July 2005 to study pollution in the city.

Mier, who until retiring in 1994 managed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s five-state regional office in Dallas, said he just wants answers, and was disappointed. He has lined up a group of national and regional scientists to review the study and ensure that researchers used the latest peer-reviewed methodology.

“It’s not that we’re pushing for a negative outcome, but in arriving at this decision we’re not sure the most current science was factored in,” he said.

MIDLOTHIAN HEALTH ASSESSMENT

The study

The federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and the Texas Department of State Health Services agreed in 2005 to investigate whether air pollution in Midlothian is making people there sick. The study was undertaken after 371 Midlothian residents petitioned the federal agency to investigate the issue. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry has no regulatory power and can only make recommendations.

Data gaps

A key component of the report is that it highlights gaps in data on a number of industrial pollutants, such as dioxins — a group of chemical compounds known to cause cancer. Because the state does not routinely collect air data for dioxins, and the consultation is based mostly on historical air sampling from state air monitors, the researchers could not address the issue even though it was one of the main concerns of the petitioners. They also could not evaluate asthma, immune system deficiencies and other health problems for the same reason. What’s more, researchers reported there are no health-based screening levels for 87 of the 113 contaminants the researchers measured. “Additional information is needed to determine the public health significance of these contaminants,” they reported.

Why it’s important

The study is expected to prompt additional research and will likely renew debate over whether regulation of Ellis County industrial polluters should be stepped up. Midlothian’s three cement plants — Holcim, Ash Grove and TXI Operations — and Chaparral Steel are among the largest industrial polluters in North Texas.

Contaminants of concern

These are some of the chemicals measured at high levels in the air in Midlothian:

Arsenic: No longer produced in the U.S., it has been used as a wood preservative and in pesticides; it is a known human carcinogen.

Lead: A metal, it is linked to behavioral and developmental disorders, and it can damage the lungs and kidney in adults and children. It is listed as a possible carcinogen.

Benzene: A highly flammable liquid used primarily to make other chemicals that are used to make products such as Styrofoam, dyes, detergents, drugs and pesticides.

1,2-Dichloroethane: A synthetic liquid most commonly used to make vinyl chloride, it is listed by the federal government as a probable human carcinogen.

For more information

The study is scheduled to be available Tuesday on the Texas Department of State Health Services Web site, www.dshs.state.tx.us/epitox/midlothian/midlothian.shtml

SCOTT STREATER, 817-390-7657
sstreater@star-telegram.com

http://www.star-telegram.com/news/story/350738.html

‘It’s in the water:’ Local doctor believes diseases afflicting Zavalla-area residents are being caused by toxins or pollutants

By CHRISTINE S. DIAMOND
The Lufkin Daily News

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Two children in two years time develop the same rare brain cancer. Numerous cases of other forms of cancer, thyroid conditions and fibromyalgia syndrome appear to plague the people of Zavalla and other communities surrounding Sam Rayburn Reservoir.

Is it merely a small-town coincidence, a statistical fluke as suggested by Dr. Sid Roberts, director of the Arthur Temple Sr. Regional Cancer Center in Lufkin, and earlier cancer cluster investigations that found nothing unusual?

Or, is it an indication of a poison in the environment that is causing so many people to manifest similar illnesses?

“It’s in the water,” said Dr. Alexander Orlov, a Lufkin-based doctor who steadfastly agrees with the Zavalla community’s first instinctive suspicion toward the common denominator — the water.

Orlov practices what is called “functional medicine” in which doctors try to determine the underlying cause of illnesses. Often, the cause is toxins, heavy metals or persistent organic pollutants in the environment that have stockpiled in a patient’s body, he said. Once rid of these agents, the body’s natural healing systems recover, he said.

To reassure the concerns of panicked parents expressed to the school superintendent, the school board and the city council, a regimen of tests were conducted on the city’s treated and pre-treated water. The tests, taken Nov. 27, are currently being assessed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Zavalla draws its water from a different aquifer than Lufkin, the Yegua-Jackson minor aquifer which has a recharge zone running east-to-west across Angelina County, according to the Texas Water Development Board Web site. Recharge zones refer to the site where rainwater quickly infiltrates through the soil into the sandy underground water storage zones known as an aquifer — sometimes hundreds of miles north of the wells, as in the case of Lufkin’s water.

Residents at the city council cancer Q&A last month claimed occurrences of brain cancer in children and male adults began decades ago. Residents discussed a realm of causes other than water. Most recently, however, city secretary Donna Marshall said folks are now tying the tumors, thyroid issues and other health concerns with the break-up of space shuttle Columbia over East Texas.

Orlov disagrees.

“It is tempting to find an event to blame,” he said.

One rather recent event isn’t likely to be the driver of such pervasive, ongoing symptoms and diseases, he said. Nor is Zavalla the only community affected, he said.

The water

From the time he opened his practice in Lufkin 15 years ago, Orlov said he began noticing an epidemic of cancer and fibromyalgia cases in the rural communities surrounding Sam Rayburn Reservoir.

At first, Orlov said he attributed it to being characteristic of a rural community where people are less educated about diet and the prevalence of smoking — agreeing with Roberts, who maintains it is the prevalence of smoking in Angelina and surrounding counties that accounts for record lung cancer rates.

“Before you address the toxins, you have to address the nutritional deficiency,” Orlov said. “We are a nation of overfed, undernourished people.”

After several years, however, Orlov began studying the relationship between human health and environmental health. And he took a second look at his patients and where they lived.

“What is it that is harming them?” he asked. “I believe our drinking water is polluted.”

Whether it is the lake or the groundwater, Orlov is convinced the causes for these health issues are in the water.

“I am 100 percent convinced it is in the water,” he said.

Possibly, he said, the contaminants were originally airborne and flushed back to earth by the rain which recharges the aquifers and fills the rivers that feed the lake. Or, the toxins may have originated from an industry upriver, like the paper mill, and washed downstream, finally settling in the lake or old river bed. The one thing he sees these communities having in common is the water. What it is in the water, Orlov says, he hasn’t figured out yet.

Usually when concerns about water arise, the first thing people think of is consumption for drinking and food. However, Orlov says bathing, showering and swimming in the water all provide a faster and more concentrated route of entry to the body as water is absorbed through the skin and bypassing the GI tract.

Orlov says he encourages all his patients to filter their water, showers included.

Canaries in the mine

So then, why doessn’t everyone exposed to the water become ill?

Health is a multi-faceted issue that includes one’s environment, diet and genetic makeup, he said. Simply put, not all people are physiologically able to process the toxins absorbed or ingested into their body in the same manner, he said.

There are those “stout” individuals, Orlov said, who are known to drink, smoke and eat unhealthy but live long healthy lives. Then there are those whose bodies choke up at the slightest exposure to toxins. This is because those in the latter group lack the ability to process out the bad stuff, which means the heavy metals and other poisons accumulate in the body where they wreak all kinds of havoc.

Like canaries once lowered into the coal mines to test for healthy oxygen levels, he said, people prone to flare-ups of fibromyalgia symptoms could be a modern-day litmus test for the presence of poisons in the environment,

Heavy metals usually don’t appear in regular blood or urine sample unless the person was recently exposed, Orlov said. He uses a test that draws the metals out by introducing them to a molecule that attaches to the heavy metal molecules and carries them out of the person’s system.

Through similar methods, most toxins can be purged from a person’s system, he said. By removing the toxins and preventing their re-entry, with filters in this case, people have options in how to treat their chronic illness, he said.

Treatments like this are options to pills that only treat the symptom, acting as “a Band-aid,” he said.

“I consider it to be my duty as a physician to address these topics because I think it is the only meaningful way for people to improve their health,” Orlov said.

After practicing “orthodox medicine” for 10 years, Orlov said he realized improving a person’s health was impossible without addressing the cause.

“We are a product of our environment. You have to address the underlying illness which is based in the environment and toxicology,” he said.

The community needs to take action in determining what toxin is responsible for the illnesses and where the toxin is originating, Orlov said.

“I really believe that we are in the midst of a health care crisis; it is because we only address symptoms,” he said. “I believe in the next few years there will be a paradigm shift in the way we practice medicine.”

When and how that happens will be up to the industry that drives medicine, not the patients or the physicians, he said.

Orlov says he plans to attend the special community action group meeting at 7 p.m. Thursday at Zavalla City Hall. Roberts said he will be unable to attend.